tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/gaddafi-1147/articlesGaddafi – The Conversation2018-06-06T14:01:50Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/977002018-06-06T14:01:50Z2018-06-06T14:01:50ZWhy Libya's new elections might not put the country back on track<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221790/original/file-20180605-119847-bytfdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Libya&#39;s last election was in 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/UNDP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Libya has been politically unstable since 2011 when <a href="http://www.understandingwar.org/report/libyan-revolution-part-4-tide-turns">a successful uprising</a> against Muammar Gaddafi’s longstanding regime left a power vacuum. A transitional government was elected in 2012; it quickly <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/publications/reports/libya-s-faustian-bargains-breaking-the-appeasement-cycle">became</a> dysfunctional. To replace it, the North African country held an election in 2014 but this led to the creation of rival governments, each backed by a powerful coalition of militias. </p>
<p>One government was based in Tripoli dominated by Islamists and hardline revolutionaries, in the west. The other was a parliament in the east, headed by Aguila Saleh, and supported by the so-called Libyan National Army which is led by General Khalifa Haftar. </p>
<p>A state of open <a href="http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509518722">civil war</a> ensued and, taking advantage of the situation, the Islamic State established a strong foothold in the country.</p>
<p>In 2015, UN efforts to reconcile the two parliaments led to the creation of another interim administration: the Government of National Accord, headed by <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/world/who-libya-s-new-prime-minister-designate-fayez-al-sarraj-1.139354">Fayez Serraj</a>. But these efforts took a backseat as Libya’s factions worked with foreign governments to confront the Islamic State and address the Mediterranean <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mediterranean-migrants-crisis-refugees-morocco-spain-back-door-to-europe-a8121221.html">migration crisis</a>.</p>
<p>The peace process seemed to be going nowhere. Then, in the last week of May French President Emmanuel Macron hosted an international conference on Libya. It was the <a href="http://www.libya-analysis.com/the-devil-is-in-the-details-of-the-libyan-meeting-in-paris/">first time</a> Libya’s political and military leaders were brought together. The outcome was a statement which <a href="http://www.elysee.fr/communiques-de-presse/article/declaration-politique-sur-la-libye/">promised</a> to hold elections for a new parliament and president by the end of 2018.</p>
<p>However, serious questions remain as to whether another interim government will solve the country’s political crisis. </p>
<p>Libya’s transitional leaders, some of whom will be presidential candidates, are entangled in – and benefit from – the country’s war economy. So do various armed factions that may view the vote as a threat to their interests and disrupt the process before it begins. </p>
<p>There are also a number of peace processes being simultaneously rolled out, which confuses the way forward. And there are new security risks and still no constitution, which undermines the legitimacy of institutions that many still view as interim and temporary.</p>
<h2>War economy</h2>
<p>The war economy is the main factor working against political reconciliation. It developed in the years after Gaddafi’s regime collapsed and is <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2012-07-12/libyas-militia-menace">driven by</a> the hundreds of self-armed militias that emerged after plundering his vast armouries. </p>
<p>Some of these groups are formally recognised by national authorities and foreign governments. Others act informally or as local security for towns, tribes, or ethnic groups. To support themselves, they fuse together; public forms of financing <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/black-market-in-dollars-and-diesel-thrives-at-libyas-cost/a-19049213">like state sector</a> salaries, smuggling (notably, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/09/malta-fuel-oil-smuggling-libya-daphne-project">oil</a>), human trafficking, <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/03/libya-kidnapping-ransom-political-security-militias-gangs.html">kidnapping</a>, extortion and “protection” rackets. These groups hold both the civilian population and the country’s core infrastructures – like oil, electricity and water – hostage. </p>
<p>This economy poses a grave threat to human security and implicates the very figures that were at the peace talks last week. That includes Serraj, Saleh, Haftar, and Khaled Al-Mishri of the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Serraj, Libya’s internationally appointed head of state, was only able to take up residence in Tripoli by making alliances with the very militias that started the civil war in 2014.</p>
<p>Saleh, who heads the internationally recognised parliament, owes much to the alliance with General Haftar’s Libyan National Army, a rival coalition of militias. There are concerns that Haftar will be a leading presidential candidate and his vociferous supporters may refuse to recognise any outcome they don’t like.</p>
<p>Al-Mishri is also chair of the High Council of State, a consultative body working with Serraj’s administration. This council draws its strength from Islamist militias in the west of the country and supports those fighting Haftar in the east. </p>
<p>All of this raises serious concerns around the elections. It’s not just a matter of who wins the vote: whose militias will become legitimate and whose will not? More importantly, will the winners of the vote have enough political power to subordinate Libya’s new security forces to civilian governance and provide realistic alternatives to the highly lucrative war economy?</p>
<h2>Challenges</h2>
<p>But overcoming Libya’s crisis also goes beyond creating an effective national government. </p>
<p>Firstly, there are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/un-libya-envoy-to-warn-overlapping-plans-are-obstructing-peace-process">multiple</a> peace processes being simultaneously rolled out. These include Libyan only talks, talks sponsored by neighbouring states like Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt, and talks led by the North Atlantic powers who aided the 2011 rebellion. Having so many processes allows factions to pick and choose which one they like and which they want to boycott. </p>
<p>Since his appointment last June, UN envoy <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/personnel-appointments/2017-06-22/mr-ghassan-salam%C3%A9-lebanon-special-representative-and">Ghassan Salamé</a> has tried to centralise the process by issuing his own roadmap. This proposed amending the 2015 Libyan Political Agreement, convening a “national dialogue,” finalising the constitution, and holding elections for a parliament and a president – all by the end of 2018.</p>
<p>However, the new roadmap Macron signed in Paris has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmZ3Q0dKEEY">added to the confusion</a>. It’s not clear whether France or the UN is leading the process. Given the fact that France has rendered <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36843186">military assistance</a> to Haftar’s forces, a peace process led by the UN would help allay fears that the West is seeking to impose itself on certain factions. </p>
<p>Another major challenge is that, almost seven years after Gaddafi’s fall, there is still no constitution. The finalisation and adoption of a constitution has been <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/a-constitution-that-doesn-t-protect-rights-and-freedoms-libya-writes-its-constitution">deferred</a> because various constituencies can’t agree on several issues. These include the role of religion in politics, civil military relations, and the participation of officials from the old regime. Without a constitution, Libya’s various factions view the country’s political future as still up for grabs. </p>
<p>Finally, there are armed spoilers who go to great lengths to prevent elections, either for ideological reasons (like the Islamic State) or to prevent their rivals from taking power. One example of this is a recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/isis-suicide-bombers-attack-libyan-electoral-commission-killing-12/2018/05/02/e39d4cf4-4e28-11e8-85c1-9326c4511033_story.html">suicide attack</a> on Libya’s electoral commission headquarters in Tripoli. </p>
<p>Unless the new roadmap addresses all of these challenges, the new election, and any subsequent interim government it ushers in, will be set up to fail.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacob Mundy has received funding from the Project on Middle East Political Science, the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships.</span></em></p>Libya’s proposed elections and any subsequent interim government will fail if the country’s challenges aren’t addressed.Jacob Mundy, Associate Professor, Colgate UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956742018-05-11T09:00:39Z2018-05-11T09:00:39ZWhat North Korea learned from Libya's decision to give up nuclear weapons<p>The North Korean nuclear challenge has lately become something of a diplomatic rollercoaster. Only a few months ago, Pyongyang and Washington were locked in an escalating war of words and increasingly confrontational military posturing – but today, their standoff has given way to a sequence of <a href="https://theconversation.com/north-korea-wants-to-a-strike-a-deal-is-trump-the-right-man-for-the-job-95730">what look like major diplomatic breakthroughs</a>. </p>
<p>Besides marking the first time a North Korean leader has set foot in the south since the end of the Korean War, the recent inter-Korean summit also yielded a joint statement announcing that both sides would initiate talks on formally ending the Korean War and “denuclearising the Korean peninsula”. Since the Trump administration has been very clear that denuclearisation is a prerequisite for any negotiations over the peninsula’s future, this has led to intense speculation about whether the north is actually serious about fully denuclearising, and if so, how that might be achieved. </p>
<p>Fortunately for those trying to find a way forward, including Trump’s national security adviser, <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/bolton-says-us-is-considering-libya-model-for-north-korea.html">John Bolton</a>, there appears to be a useful model: the successful dismantling of Libya’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programmes in the early 2000s.</p>
<p>On the face of it, the comparison seems illogical. The North Koreans themselves view the Libyan experience as a cautionary tale: after NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 helped tip the civil war against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, a North Korean official <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/world/asia/25korea.html">openly stated</a> that Libya’s WMD deal with the US had been used as “an invasion tactic to disarm the country”. Nonetheless, understanding the Libyan experience is an important part of getting to grips with the Korean issue – and the contrasts are more revealing than the similarities.</p>
<h2>Step by step</h2>
<p>Libya didn’t decide to give up its WMD programme overnight. Gaddafi had for decades viewed WMD as a means of deterring foreign intervention, an important priority for a regime with a highly provocative foreign policy that (among other things) included sponsorship of international terrorism against the West. In 1986, Libya’s provocations even drove the US to the point of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/15/politics/us-jets-hit-terrorist-centers-in-libya-reagan-warns-of-new-attacks.html">launching airstrikes</a>. </p>
<p>But by the 1990s, the balance began to shift. Libya was hit hard by UN sanctions, and even as global oil prices fell, it failed to modernise its oil sector. As a result, unemployment rose and living standards declined. Gaddafi found himself under political pressure at home, and from the mid-1990s onwards, his approach to foreign relations began to change. He ceased his support for terrorism, and handed over the individuals suspected of carrying out the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jan/31/lockerbie.derekbrown">1988 Lockerbie bombing</a>. All this he did with a view to getting international sanctions removed, and encouraging the foreign investment he needed to revitalise the economy and quell domestic dissent. </p>
<p>It was these developments that made his decision on WMD possible. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s administrations made clear to Gaddafi that his WMD programmes were obstructing full re-engagement with the US, and when the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein, it seemed to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-libya-gave-up-on-the-bomb/">spur Gaddafi along</a>. Crucially, Washington also signalled to Gaddafi that its concerns over WMD could be assuaged through behaviour change, rather than the regime change that ousted Saddam. Tony Blair <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/11/tony-blair-gaddafi-deal-prevented-isis-getting-chemical-weapons-libya">went further</a> in 2006, assuring Gaddafi that the UK would come to Libya’s assistance if chemical or biological weapons were used or threatened against it.</p>
<p>So how does this story compare with North Korea’s? The differences are clear. Despite <a href="https://theconversation.com/north-korea-wants-to-a-strike-a-deal-is-trump-the-right-man-for-the-job-95730">all international efforts</a>, Pyongyang has developed and built an arsenal of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles; some of its missiles could hit the US mainland, and it has reportedly even <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/08/08/542286036/north-korea-has-miniaturized-a-nuclear-warhead-u-s-intelligence-says">miniaturised warheads</a> with which to arm them.</p>
<p>This puts North Korea far ahead of Libya in 2003. When Gaddafi’s government negotiated its programme away, its lack of domestic scientific expertise meant it was nowhere near developing a workable nuclear device, despite significant nuclear material and technology acquisitions from abroad. Since the Libyans did not possesses any deterrent power in the form of their nuclear programme, they arguably had little to lose from negotiating it away. And while they did possess a sizeable chemical weapons capability, which was included in the disarmament deal with Washington, their overall negotiating position was relatively weak.</p>
<p>By contrast, Pyongyang’s existing nuclear inventory puts it in a much stronger position. Since Kim Jong-un appears to have a functioning nuclear deterrent at his disposal, it remains to be seen exactly what Pyongyang will be willing to give up. Is it possible, for instance, that North Korea might give up its weapons and delivery systems but perhaps retain the associated technical development infrastructure and the capability to reconstitute its programme should things go badly? </p>
<p>In short, Pyongyang’s negotiating hand is much stronger than Tripoli’s was, and the potential outcomes far more varied.</p>
<h2>Beyond gestures</h2>
<p>Improving relations with the US was central to Libya’s 2003 decision. Seeing Washington make good on its promises to lift UN sanctions once the Lockerbie suspects were handed over reassured Gaddafi, and by the time the WMD talks began, some confidence had been built up on the Libyan side. But today it’s North Korea, not the US, that most needs to shore up the other side’s goodwill and confidence. That much is clear from Kim Jong-un’s recent charm offensive, which marks a significant departure from his government’s past behaviour.</p>
<p>Washington has also been working on its relationship with the north, subtly at first and then more publicly. In mid-April, it was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/north-korea-trump-kim-jong-un-meetings">reported</a> that the then-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, had made a secret trip to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-un. Few details of that encounter have been made public, but it was clearly a way for Pompeo to scope out the diplomatic territory while limiting the risk of Trump losing face – an approach that surely will have resonated with the North Korean leader. Pompeo has since returned to Pyongyang as secretary of state and overseen <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44063665">the release of three US prisoners</a>.</p>
<p>These developments are all positive, but real progress won’t be secured until a dismantlement deal is first negotiated and then actually implemented. Nuclear weapons have become an integral element of the Kim regime’s political legitimacy at home as well as abroad; since giving them up completely would put that legitimacy at risk, they won’t be handed over quickly. And as in Libya, if progress can be made on the nuclear issue, security assurances from the US will be critical to avoid slipping backwards.</p>
<p>Granting those assurances would pose challenges in itself. It’s difficult to see Pyongyang following through on denuclearisation without concrete preconditions. Again, there’s a parallel with Libya, where different stages in the disarmament process were met with incremental recognition by the US State Department to reward Tripoli’s progress. If the progress that suddenly seems possible in the North Korea case actually comes about, perhaps this is how it’ll be made.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95674/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wyn Bowen receives grant funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for work on nuclear security issues broadly defined.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Moran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After decades of deadly enmity, Libya and the West made a major breakthrough on weapons of mass destruction. How?Wyn Bowen, Professor of Non-Proliferation & International Security, King's College LondonMatthew Moran, Reader in International Security, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/652672016-09-22T17:11:53Z2016-09-22T17:11:53ZAssessing the risk from Africa as Libya loses its chemical weapons<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138483/original/image-20160920-12483-hu9bm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The threat of chemical weapon attacks is on the rise globally.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Libya’s remaining chemical weapons left over from the Gaddafi regime are now being safely <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37308753">disposed</a> of in a German facility. This eliminates the risk of them falling into the wrong hands. But can these same hands acquire weapons of mass destruction from the rest of Africa?</p>
<p>Weapons of mass destruction are commonly broken into four categories: chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.opcw.org/about-chemical-weapons/what-is-a-chemical-weapon">Chemical agents</a> include choking agents (chlorine), blister agents (mustard), blood agents (hydrogen cyanide and nerve agents as well as sarin or VX). Biological weapons involve a microorganism such as bacteria (anthrax is an example), fungi or a virus (such as smallpox) and <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/bio_tox.htm">toxins</a>. <a href="http://www.nti.org/learn/radiological/">Radiological attack</a> material is usually combined with radioactive material in conventional explosives while a full nuclear detention involves fission. </p>
<p>There is limited open source information on African countries’ current biological and chemical weapons programmes. And all African countries, with just two exceptions- Egypt and South Sudan - have signed the <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">Chemical Weapons Convention</a> which commits countries to destroy all stockpiles. No African state <a href="http://nwp.ilpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Africa-nuclear-weapons.pdf">at the moment</a> possesses nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>State-owned stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction on the continent are therefore not the biggest threat. Rather there is growing <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/dual-use-traders-the-real-wmd-threat-in-southeast-asia/">concern</a> about dual-use goods. These are materials that are primarily produced for peaceful purposes but can also be used for deadly purposes. </p>
<p>Examples include chemical products used by industry such as herbicides or pesticides that can be turned into weapons or biological agents created using your typical research lab equipment. For example, Australian <a href="https://www.amacad.org/content/publications/pubContent.aspx?d=22233">researchers</a> exploring ways to control the mouse population unexpectedly produced a lethal mousepox virus.</p>
<p>Governments often have limited knowledge of chemical production since it is the preserve of the private sector. Often these facilities are not as well secured as government facilities.</p>
<p>Kenya, with the help of the US, has just taken steps to prevent terrorists laying their hands on biomedical toxins that could be used to make <a href="http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Research-labs-set-for-Sh1-7bn-upgrade-to-avert-terror-attack/539546-3381412-135ih62/">biological weapons</a>. The country has been the target of deadly attacks by al-Shabaab terrorists in <a href="https://theconversation.com/making-sense-of-horrific-violence-in-kenya-39746">recent times</a>. </p>
<h2>What is known</h2>
<p>Egypt <a href="http://fas.org/nuke/guide/egypt/nuke/">decided</a> to concentrate on increasing conventional forces, and chemical and biological weapons, rather than nuclear weapons. It is also one of the few states to <a href="http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/egypt/">have used</a> chemical weapons in wartime in the 1960s. In the 1980s Egypt <a href="http://www.idsa.in/cbwmagazine/CBWinEgyptandLibya_DanyShoham">intensified</a> its biological activity, working closely with Iraq. Information on its current programmes is limited. </p>
<p>The country has been very vocal on the subject of the Chemical Weapons <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">Convention</a>. It justifies the fact that it has not signed the convention <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-ratifying-the-chemical-weapons-convention-is-in-israels-best-interest-63889">on the grounds that</a> Israel has also not ratified it. </p>
<p>South Sudan is the only other remaining African country that’s not party to the convention. The newly established country was believed to be on the receiving end of chemical weapons attacks in early 2016. The <a href="http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article57879">accusation</a> was that the Sudanese Army used such weapons during fighting in the Lanyi and Mundri areas. The UN Mission in South Sudan <a href="https://radiotamazuj.org/en/article/unmiss-says-no-evidence-chemical-weapons-use-mundri">investigated</a> and declared no signs of chemical weapons and that smoke inhaled by children may have come from either conventional weapons or teargas. </p>
<p>Sudan was believed at one point to be <a href="http://bio-defencewarfareanalyst.blogspot.com/2014/05/up-comingsudans-pursuit-of-biological.html">pursuing</a> biological weapons and to <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2001/10/were_the_sudanese_making_chemical_weapons.html">possess</a> VX nerve gas. But open source evidence is inconclusive. </p>
<h2>The case of Libya</h2>
<p>Unlike its chemical weapons programme, Libya’s biological weapons never really came to life.</p>
<p>It <a href="http://www.idsa.in/cbwmagazine/CBWinEgyptandLibya_DanyShoham#footnoteref23_o6dongg">allegedly</a> sought assistance for the programme from countries like Cuba and Pakistan, and tried to recruit apartheid era South African scientists. American and British specialists invited to Libya in 2003 <a href="http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/78338.pdf">found</a> no concrete evidence of an ongoing biological effort. </p>
<p>Libya was more successful in its nuclear programme, which Gaddafi gave up in 2003. The last of Libya’s highly enriched uranium left the country on a Russian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-cables-libya-enriched-uranium">chartered plane</a> on December 21 2009. </p>
<p>The country retains a stockpile of natural uranium ore concentrate, also known as yellow cake, which is stored in a former military facility near Sebha in the south of the country. According to the <a href="http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2015/257522.htm">US State Department</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>(the risk of trafficking and proliferation of this material is low, due to) the bulk and weight of the storage containers and the need for extensive additional processing before the material would be suitable for weapons purposes. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Nuclear on the continent</h2>
<p>Today, highly enriched uranium is an extremely rare commodity in Africa. Since Libya’s clean out in 2009, only Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa <a href="http://www.fmwg.org/fmwg_wg_2015/HEU_Free_Zone_Report_FINAL.pdf">still have</a> stocks. Ghana and Nigeria each possess less than 1 kilogram.</p>
<p>During the apartheid era in South Africa the government’s <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/inside-dr-deaths-laboratory">Project Coast</a> focused on the development of chemical weapons and various drugs like mandrax. South Africa developed <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/about-us/press-releases/understanding-south-africas-past-nuclear-weapons-programme">six and a half nuclear bombs</a> that were eventually dismantled. South Africa’s Pelindaba research centre still houses large quantities of weapons grade material. </p>
<p>Other nuclear facilities in Africa do exist. Of the world’s <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/radioisotopes-research/research-reactors.aspx">243 operational</a> research reactors, only 10 are in Africa. This includes research reactors typically found at universities. Their lower enriched nuclear material can be used to make a dirty radiological bomb.</p>
<h2>Non-state actors and less secure spaces</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.fmwg.org/2015-_Nuclear_and_WMD_proliferation__A_View_from_Algeria__Arslan_Chikhaoui-8_August_2015_.pdf">Intelligence reports</a> have indicated that groups such as Al Qaeda in the Maghreb have made multiple attempts to manufacture materials for weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>Analysts also envision militants known as <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2014/10/05/ebola-as-isis-bio-weapon/&amp;refURL=&amp;referrer=#1775c9f01c7b">suicide infectors</a> visiting an area with an infectious disease outbreak like Ebola to purposely infect themselves and then using air travel to carry out the attack. Reports from 2009 <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/4287469/Black-Death-kills-al-Qaeda-operatives-in-Algeria.html">show</a> 40 al-Qaeda linked militants being killed by the plague at a training camp in Algeria. There were claims that they were developing the disease as a weapon. </p>
<p>Islamic State has already <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/315025-islamic-state-chemical-weapons/">produced</a> and used toxic chemicals such as mustard and chlorine gas. In Africa, an Islamic State cell in Morocco was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/isis-cell-had-been-preparing-chemical-attack-in-morocco-a6886121.html">planning</a> an attack involving six jars of sulphur-containing chemical fertiliser which when heated can release a fatally toxic gas and possibly the tetanus toxin. According to Iraqi and US intelligence officials, Islamic State is aggressively <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/officials-islamic-state-seeking-chemical-weapons/">pursuing</a> further development of chemical weapons and has set up a branch dedicated to research and experiments using scientists from throughout the Middle East. </p>
<p>The disposal of Libya’s chemical weapons has lowered the risk of weapons of mass destruction in Africa. But we have seen how far non-state actors are willing to go to either produce or steal such weapons. </p>
<p>The threat they pose cannot be ignored. African countries, with help from bilateral partners and the international community, has <a href="http://www.stanleyfoundation.org/1540/ISSAfricanpespectivesof1540.pdf">broadened</a> its nonproliferation focus. It will need to keep doing so if the goal is to effectively counter this threat.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65267/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Firsing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Governments often have limited knowledge of chemical production as it is the preserve of the private sector. Often these facilities are not as well secured as government facilities.Scott Firsing, Adjunct professor, University of North Carolina WilmingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/577762016-04-27T08:40:03Z2016-04-27T08:40:03ZLibya's collapse into chaos is not an argument against intervention<p>Libya is mired in crisis – a “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/barack-obama-says-david-cameron-allowed-libya-to-become-a-s-show-a6923976.html">shit show</a>” according to President Obama. Many have declared that the 2011 intervention <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle">shouldn’t have been launched</a> , and that the Libya campaign is reason enough to put an end to the practice of “<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/121085/libya-no-model-humanitarian-intervention">humanitarian intervention</a>”. </p>
<p>These arguments are superficially convincing, but they presume a counterfactual history with little supporting evidence – and ultimately amount to an intellectual dead end.</p>
<p>Critiques of the intervention in Libya generally hinge – though not always explicitly – on a key tenet of the “just war” tradition: “reasonable prospects of success”. This holds that force should only be used if, on the basis of available knowledge, it will not make a situation worse. Events in Libya since 2011, critics argue, show that this standard was not <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle">met</a>. </p>
<p>But this argument overlooks the fact that contemporary critics have a distinct advantage over those who supported intervention in March 2011 – the benefit of hindsight.</p>
<p>In March 2011, there was unprecedented global consensus on the need to act, with the UN Security Council, regional organisations, and the anti-Gaddafi rebels all supportive of the intervention. Evidence at the time suggested that not acting would have led to an escalation in suffering, especially given Gaddafi’s threat to “show <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/africa/18libya.html?pagewanted=all">no mercy</a>” on the eve of an attack on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.</p>
<p>Much of the contemporary criticism, however, presumes a counterfactual historical narrative where intervention did not occur and the situation in Libya did not <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/no-the-libya-intervention-wasnt-humanitarian-success-15710">degenerate</a>. Though obviously a possibility, proponents of this view must advance some basis for this presumption; few in fact do.</p>
<p>Libya is today plagued by <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-years-after-gaddafis-fall-is-libya-any-closer-to-political-stability-57534">civil war, governmental collapse and the increased presence of Islamic State</a>. Would declining to intervene have prevented this? Unchecked oppression by Gaddafi’s forces would inevitably have led to the death of civilians, which would probably have inspired the rebels to fight on. </p>
<p>With the financial and military support of regional allies <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22arab.html?_r=1">opposed to Gaddafi</a>, the east of the country – l<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/11/events-2-years-ago-sparked-current-uprising-libya">ong hostile to rule from the capital Tripoli</a> – would no doubt have remained a zone of conflict. This would have led to the weakening of the central state, infrastructural collapse and lawlessness. It is surely likely that IS would have sought to exploit this situation, just as it has now. </p>
<p>Indeed, Syria is experiencing the same problems as Libya’s on more a horrific scale. Can we be sure that non-intervention would not have precipitated a Syria-like scenario in Libya?</p>
<h2>First, do no harm?</h2>
<p>The idea that because the intervention in Libya failed, intervention more generally should never again be launched without a guarantee of success is also flawed. This argument fails to appreciate the distinction between doing the wrong thing and doing the right thing in the wrong way.</p>
<p>One easily can avoid all risk of failure – by never acting. This has been presented by some critics of intervention generally in terms of the Hippocratic oath’s injunction to “<a href="https://chomsky.info/199903__/">first, do no harm</a>”. Prudence is obviously sensible, but if we interpret this injunction too literally, we find ourselves supporting perennial inertia; no doctor would ever perform any surgery if they were forbidden from doing something that <em>might</em> go wrong.</p>
<p>If the potential for failure is grounds for forestalling action then of course it is impossible to envisage a situation where a humanitarian intervention will ever be launched. This would, however, mean a world in which states are free to slaughter their own people with impunity. </p>
<p>Some may see this as <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1999-07-01/give-war-chance">preferable to the potential disorder wrought by humanitarian intervention</a>. I argue that it’s the triumph of indulgent fatalism.</p>
<h2>Another way</h2>
<p>The chaos that engulfs Libya today doesn’t necessarily mean it was wrong to intervene in 2011. Clearly it suggests that the action taken was deeply flawed, but it doesn’t imply there was no need to act. Likewise, the failure of the intervention can’t reasonably be used as an argument against external military intervention in general. That risks conflating the specific mistakes made in 2011 with the fundamental flaws of all interventions past and future.</p>
<p>This argument is set to surface again. Given the proliferation of “<a href="http://unhcr.org/556725e69.html">spiralling</a>” humanitarian crises and a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016">precipitous rise in global state oppression</a>, it seems inevitable that the world will soon be confronted by intra-state crises that potentially warrant external military intervention. When that happens, many onlookers will use Libya to argue that external military intervention doesn’t work. </p>
<p>But it’s surely incumbent upon serious analysts to do more than simply point to Libya and declare “Look at the mess they made! Never again!” This may win cheers of approval from those ideologically opposed to intervention, but in a broader sense, what does it achieve? Better, surely, to identify and support a different kind of intervention – one that could save us from having to choose between a repeat of Libya-style failure or the horrors that resulted from Rwanda-like inaction. </p>
<p>Key to the failure in Libya has been the influence of state interests, from the US’s wariness of over-committing, to the UK’s “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/10/david-cameron-distracted-libya-conflict-barack-obama">distraction</a>” by events elsewhere, to <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/bahrain-libya-uprising-double-standards-327/">the overt hypocrisy</a> of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies. The perennial problem of state interests clearly necessitates an alternative means by which to respond to intra-state crises. </p>
<p>If we wanted to look beyond the Western state-led model of intervention and come up with a different means, we could (for example) get behind the establishment of an independent, permanent UN rapid reaction force, one capable of coming to the aid of besieged populations. This is obviously an idealistic proposal, and it’s been debated for a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/22/opinion/22iht-edbonn.t.html">long time</a> with little movement. But a proper debate over the merits of this or related proposals is surely preferable to counterfactual conjecture and self-righteous fatalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aidan Hehir does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Libya has become a case study for those who think the world should never intervene in national conflicts. Not so fast.Aidan Hehir, Reader in International Relations, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/541672016-03-20T23:50:14Z2016-03-20T23:50:14ZLooking beyond 'the refugee crisis', can migrants be the new agents of democracy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112671/original/image-20160224-16436-101uk9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Egyptian refugees fleeing Libya with the help of the US Air Force.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Defense.gov_News_Photo_110305-M-2275H-537_-_Egyptian_refugees_fleeing_Libya_board_a_U.S._Air_Force_KC-130J_Hercules_aircraft_in_Djerba,_Tunisia,_on_March_5,_2011.jpg">US Department of Defence </a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Over the last few decades, the focus on migration has widened beyond a narrow preoccupation with integration – a positive development. However, while issues of migration and development, migration and securitisation, migration and climate change, and migration and gender are all relevant, something is conspicuously absent from the debate – the relationship between migration and the spread of democracy. </p>
<p>Consider the influence the current refugee crisis has had on the European Union’s assessment of Turkey and its questionable record on human rights. Despite the Turkish government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/takeover-of-opposition-newspaper-is-a-death-warrant-for-free-speech-in-turkey-55902">increasing crackdowns on press freedom</a>, European Commission president Jean Claude-Juncker stressed that Europe <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/11957432/EU-should-not-harp-on-at-Turkey-about-human-rights-says-Jean-Claude-Juncker.html">should not “harp on”</a> about Turkey’s human rights record. As the EU is now <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-europes-refugee-deal-with-turkey-is-it-legal-and-can-it-work-56054">reliant on Turkey</a> in its efforts to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35854413">reduce the flow of people to Europe</a>, criticisms of Turkey have become much more muted.</p>
<p>This case of realpolitik recalls one of the darker moments in recent EU history. In 2010, Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi used the growing number of refugees and migrants in his country as weapons of mass migration as he threatened the vision of a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/7973649/Gaddafi-Europe-will-turn-black-unless-EU-pays-Libya-4bn-a-year.html">“black Europe”</a>. In response, the EU supplied him with billions of dollars and border patrol technology, despite widespread reports of abuse in the Libyan camps.</p>
<p>Clearly, migration and democracy promotion can have a negative correlation. The relationship between liberalism and racism has historically been “<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2015.1016065?journalCode=rers20">a hell of a love affair</a>”.</p>
<p>An analysis of legal records from 22 countries between 1790 and 2010 suggests democracies are often leaders in <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674729049">promoting racist policy</a> while undemocratic countries are among the first to outlaw discrimination. This was certainly the case in the US when 26 state governors declared they would <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/16/9746456/map-syrian-refugees-governors">not accept Syrian refugees</a> (or only Christian refugees from Syria) after the Paris terror attacks.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112674/original/image-20160224-16425-1x2sp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112674/original/image-20160224-16425-1x2sp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112674/original/image-20160224-16425-1x2sp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112674/original/image-20160224-16425-1x2sp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112674/original/image-20160224-16425-1x2sp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112674/original/image-20160224-16425-1x2sp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112674/original/image-20160224-16425-1x2sp81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Syrian refugees gather outside a railway station in Budapest in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mstyslav Chernov</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While this paints a bleak picture of the migration-democracy nexus, it is worthwhile to move from a state-centric perspective to one that puts the migrants themselves into focus. </p>
<p>Democracy is more than mere institutions and regular elections; it depends on the diffuse support of the population. With migrant numbers steadily increasing, their attitudes and actions can influence the democratic development of countries affected. This is especially so where there are large and constant flows of people, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mexicos-top-diplomat-calls-trumps-policies-ignorant-and-racist/2016/02/27/fabbb5f0-dd65-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html">as between Mexico and the US</a>.</p>
<h2>To spread democratic values, we must share them</h2>
<p>The Eurocentric assumption is that migrants move from authoritarian countries to established democracies of the West. There they “learn democracy” and then can act as agents of democratisation upon their return. </p>
<p>However, contrary to common discourses in the US and Europe, many of the world’s migration flows are not headed towards Western democracies. The Gulf states, for example, are <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-the-gulf-states-so-reluctant-to-take-in-refugees-47394">major destinations</a>. The temporary migrants working there often come from more democratic countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia or India.</p>
<p>Even when migrants are moving to more democratic countries, no automatic processes of democratic diffusion take place. The actual “blessings” of democracy may be out of reach for the majority of migrants, particularly if their status is irregular. Their treatment may be <a href="https://theconversation.com/seizing-valuables-from-asylum-seekers-denmark-has-lost-the-plot-and-its-heart-53772">at odds with democratic values</a> and principles. </p>
<p>It follows that, in the destination country, other spaces for exercising democratic participation and individual freedom outside the system of government may be more significant in influencing migrant attitudes. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112675/original/image-20160224-16436-1n4fja7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112675/original/image-20160224-16436-1n4fja7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=450&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112675/original/image-20160224-16436-1n4fja7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=450&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112675/original/image-20160224-16436-1n4fja7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=450&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112675/original/image-20160224-16436-1n4fja7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=566&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112675/original/image-20160224-16436-1n4fja7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=566&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112675/original/image-20160224-16436-1n4fja7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=566&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong are able to be part of an international union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This explains why returning Filipino migrants from Hong Kong <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498514217/Democratization-through-Migration?-Political-Remittances-and-Participation-of-Philippine-Return-Migrants">show</a> the highest support for democratic principles. That’s unsurprising when the comparison is to those returning to the Philippines from Saudi Arabia, but it also applies to the comparison with returnees from democracies such as Japan or Taiwan. </p>
<p>The Filipino migrants in Hong Kong are predominantly domestic workers. They have no genuine prospect of ever gaining the right to abode, but they have access to legal recourse and enjoy freedoms such as freedom of speech and the right to organise and form unions.</p>
<p>There is an obvious policy lesson here: if destination countries want to support migrants as agents of development, they have to treat them according to democratic values and provide them with opportunities for participation. Surely it isn’t too far-fetched to claim that if migrants are to promote democratic principles and practices back home, it is beneficial for them to experience these first-hand.</p>
<h2>The challenges of diaspora politics</h2>
<p>Migrants can influence the democratisation process in their country of origin without necessarily returning. While communicating with friends and family back home they report their personal experiences with democratic practices like unionisation.</p>
<p>More directly, they may seek to directly influence their homelands by engaging in what has come to be known as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_politics">diaspora politics</a>”. This can be economic, social or political in nature, though every engagement can ultimately have political implications.</p>
<p>For example, the Mexican <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2015/12/30/how-money-sent-home-mexicos-emigrants-help-improve-their-country/78082834/">Tres por Uno</a> (Three for One) program has been widely praised. For every peso sent home by migrants as remittances, the federal, state and municipal governments add one peso each. </p>
<p>Though this seems like a good incentive at first sight, it has some problematic implications. When private money determines the direction of public spending, an intensification of the inequalities between communities with higher and lower numbers of migrants abroad could result.</p>
<p>The political implications are more obvious in the case of absentee voting. Migrant communities – those from the Dominican Republic, for instance – have fought for their right to vote overseas. While these campaigns succeeded, the actual voter turnout remained quite low. </p>
<p>One dilemma is whether migrants should be allowed to influence policies through their votes without having to bear the consequences. The Philippines tried to resolve this issue by making a planned return in the foreseeable future a requirement for absentee voting, but this faces practical problems.</p>
<p>Other countries like Italy go even further and reserve a certain number of seats in their parliaments for citizens residing abroad. Again, this regulation might clash with the “all affected” principle, since the election outcome might not directly affect these voters.</p>
<p>To complicate things further, people with dual citizenship might be able to vote in two countries and thus weaken the “one (wo)man, one vote” principle. This might also happen on the supranational level: a well-known German <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-election-germany-double-vote-idUSBREA4P0CO20140526">journalist</a> of Italian origin voted in both countries during the last European Parliament election and was fined as a result.</p>
<h2>It goes both ways</h2>
<p>Mobility thus challenges democratic principles that rely on the concept of nation-states as “containers” with an assumed congruence of territorial, social and political space.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112676/original/image-20160224-16429-1ejwmo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112676/original/image-20160224-16429-1ejwmo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112676/original/image-20160224-16429-1ejwmo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112676/original/image-20160224-16429-1ejwmo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112676/original/image-20160224-16429-1ejwmo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112676/original/image-20160224-16429-1ejwmo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112676/original/image-20160224-16429-1ejwmo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is it time for a new conception of rights without citizenship?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Metropolico.org/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps, then, the answer lies in decoupling citizenship and democratic rights. Instead of treating citizenship status as a membership card to an exclusive club, what if some membership benefits could be granted without formal citizenship after a prolonged stay?</p>
<p>Benefits could include the right to vote (at least on the municipal level), labour rights and the right to form and join migrants’ rights organisations and trade unions. These unions could be transnational in scope, encompassing countries of origin and destination. </p>
<p>If migrants are exposed to democratic principles and freedoms even without the VIP card of citizenship, they could have the real potential to become global “agents of democratisation”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54167/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefan Rother does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Surely it isn’t too far-fetched to claim that if migrants are to promote democracy back home, it is beneficial for them to experience democratic values and principles in the countries hosting them.Stefan Rother, Lecturer in Political Science, Freiburg University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/551752016-02-23T12:46:43Z2016-02-23T12:46:43ZLibya's new unity government faces the mother of all rebuilding jobs<p>Five years after the collapse of Libya, a new UN-backed national unity government has finally <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/15/hopes-for-peace-in-libya-as-make-up-of-new-unity-government-announced">been unveiled</a>. It seeks to bring together the existing rival governments in the east and west of Libya, mainly to collaborate in the fight against groups affiliated to the Islamic State. The first elections are planned for 2018. If it is to succeed in building a viable country, however, this new government will first need to make Libya stable again. </p>
<p>Libya’s political system has completely broken down since 2011. What began early that year with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12477275">protests against</a> the arrest of Fathi Tirbil, a legal advocate for families of the victims of the 1996 Abu Slim prison massacre, soon escalated to a <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Libya-Revolt-of-2011">civil war</a> and NATO-led intervention against the government. </p>
<p>After the Gaddafi regime had been overthrown and international observers <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/libyas-first-free-elections-in-50-years/a-16080604">reported</a> free and fair elections in July 2012, many optimistically foresaw a transition to democracy. Alas, the country’s new political institutions had neither the capacity nor the mechanisms to support a viable system. For example, the National Transitional Council (NTC) – which acted as the interim government – was internally divided and, in any case, was not very representative of the rebel forces that overthrew Gaddafi.</p>
<p>Despite the announcement about the new unity government, Libya is far from united. The government will compete for power with the Tripoli-based General National Congress in the west, which has a consultative role in the new system; as well as the Tobruk-based parliament in the east and various tribal militias and jihadist groups.</p>
<p>Violence flared up again in 2014, as the various competing players struggled over political power and control of energy resources. The country is currently in chaos. </p>
<p>If the new government is to prevail, it must overcome the following three major challenges:</p>
<p><strong>1. State-building and reconciliation</strong></p>
<p>It has to build new democratic institutions out of nothing; during the Gaddafi era nobody participated in politics outside the ruling elites. The previous attempt to establish democracy through the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18341022">General National Congress</a> has been hamstrung by internal conflict between its political blocs. </p>
<p>Libya is a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-tribes-idUSTRE77O43R20110825">complex mix</a> of tribal divisions between Arabs, Berbers and Africans from further south. The new government has to achieve a national reconciliation by including everyone. This must be reflected in a new constitution, following the <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Libya_2011.pdf">interim constitutional declaration</a> of 2011, which guarantees cultural rights for all Libyans – a reverse of Gaddafi-era discrimination against black African ethnic groups. A Constitution Drafting Assembly produced a draft of a new constitution last autumn, but <a href="http://www.icj.org/libya-revise-draft-constitution-to-ensure-compliance-with-international-standards/">was seen</a> as flawed and non-inclusive. </p>
<p><strong>2. Oil and social cohesion</strong></p>
<p>It is impossible for Libya to move towards democracy without first reaching a certain degree of economic equality: the EU-funded <a href="http://www.arabtrans.eu/">Arab Transitions project</a> confirmed that in Libya and other <a href="http://middleeast.about.com/od/humanrightsdemocracy/a/Definition-Of-The-Arab-Spring.htm">Arab Spring</a> nations, economic equality and social justice were key reasons for the upheaval. Central to this is the oil industry, which <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/au.html">makes up</a> about 80% of GDP and 99% of government revenue. Unless the wealth is shared around, Libya will always be vulnerable to extremism. </p>
<p>Many of the country’s oil facilities are still occupied by militias and paramilitary groups, which raise enormous funds from exporting it. The future of the national oil company is unclear, with rival political factions competing for control – and the situation is the same with the central bank. Over the past five years, the economy has been severely disrupted. Getting this back on track is vital. </p>
<p><strong>3. Security</strong></p>
<p>The Gaddafi regime was notoriously violent against dissidents. After it was gone, it proved very difficult to make the country secure. The various revolutionary groups were not willing to give up their arms and become loyal to the security forces of the National Transitional Council. </p>
<p>In October 2011 the NTC’s solution was <a href="http://henryjacksonsociety.org/2012/08/31/why-libyas-supreme-security-committee-must-be-brought-to-heel-before-its-too-late/">to recruit</a> about 100,000 revolutionaries from these groups to the Supreme Security Committee. It then attempted in 2012 to create an alternative parallel army, the <a href="http://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/libyan-shield-force-lsf">Libyan Shield</a>. This too tried to integrate the militias into state security structures by maintaining their existing battalions and allowing them to be relatively autonomous. Unfortunately it put them on the state payroll without making them very loyal to the government. </p>
<p>Four years on and the struggle between various armed elements, local militias and state security forces is an everyday phenomenon. The state remains fragmented, has little capacity to enforce law and order and does not possess a monopoly over the means of violence. The militias serving under the Supreme Security Committee and Libyan Shield don’t trust the new system, so they don’t function as united entities. </p>
<p>Libya also needs to deal with the growing threat of the Islamic State. This has been made worse by the fact that growing numbers of senior IS fighters from Syria have relocated to Libya since the Russians <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/war-against-isis-2015-russia-will-not-launch-ground-invasion-syria-putin-says-2136298">intervened</a> last year. IS has been using Libya as a launch pad for attacks on the surrounding countries. Solving this problem involves taking weapons out of the wrong hands and making the borders properly secure – working in concert with the likes of the US, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/12166908/US-air-strike-on-Libya-kills-two-abducted-Serbians.html">which bombed</a> an IS camp at Sabratha in central Libya on February 19, killing 40. </p>
<p>In sum, Libya will remain unstable without reconciliation and proper democracy, and without a new social contract. But until there is a certain level of basic security the situation is likely to get worse. To achieve these things the country’s competing parties must work together. Introducing a new unity government for Libya is one thing – making inroads into the country’s problems is quite another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ilia Xypolia receives funding from the European Union&#39;s Framework 7 Programme, grant number 320214</span></em></p>With everything from Islamic State to disenfranchised black Africans to deal with, the former Gaddafi stronghold has everything to achieve.Ilia Xypolia, Research fellow, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/430192015-06-10T10:02:41Z2015-06-10T10:02:41ZLibya: multitude of militias stand in way of new UN peace plan<p>Four years after the Arab Spring, Libya has been locked in a state of constant violence, veering close to full-on civil war and state collapse. Now, increasingly concerned about the instability there, the United Nations has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33059028">put forward a draft proposal for a Libyan unity government</a>, bringing the two governments currently operating in Libya in an attempt to at last establish some semblance of order in the country. </p>
<p>Announcing the plan, Bernadino Leon, head of the UN support mission in Libya, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33059028">proclaimed</a>: “The people of Libya have their eyes on this gathering, on you, in the hope that you’ll save your country and your people from protracted conflict.” The draft proposal he presented is based on months of high-level discussions, though the details released have so far been vague. </p>
<p>If the factions agree to the peace plan, it will establish an interim seat of government in Tripoli, with a council of ministers headed by a prime minister and two deputies. The House of Representatives that was elected in 2014 in Tobruk will be the only legislative body. An additional 120-member state council consultative body will be set up, consisting of members from the Tripoli parliament. </p>
<p>Delegates from both sides will meet in Germany with other European and African leaders, after consulting with their factions and returning to Morocco for more talks.</p>
<p>Given the current state of Libya and the chasm between its two governments, they will have their work cut out for them.</p>
<h2>Split loyalties</h2>
<p>One government, working out of the eastern city of Tobruk, is internationally recognised; meanwhile, an armed alliance of militias originally from Misrata known as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/31/tripoli-residents-libya-dawn-islamist-militias">Libya Dawn</a> has taken over the capital in Tripoli, running its own government there since <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/06/08/uk-libya-security-idUKKBN0OO2G720150608">the summer of 2014</a>. The fighting has taken place primarily between two opposing armies, which have allied themselves with these two governments. </p>
<p>One army is controlled by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-31698755">General Khalifa Haftar</a>, who defected from the Qaddafi regime when the 2011 revolution broke out. He came to prominence when he “suspended” the pro-Islamic government in Tripoli in February of 2014. Though this was quickly rejected by the authorities, Haftar formed and trained more than 6,000 soldiers and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19744533">launched an offensive against Islamic groups in Benghazi</a>. Today, his army is a cobbled-together mixture of Qaddafi-era soldiers, those seeking greater autonomy for the east, and some tribal fighters from the west and south. </p>
<p>The Libya Dawn coalition, on the other hand, is made up of <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/unravelling">various militias</a> with a pro-Islamic slant, along with Berber ethnic militias and conservative merchants from Misrata.</p>
<p>The political agreement in the plan underestimates just how ill-equipped Libya’s security sector is to deal with the challenges from these groups. The UN’s proposal does make some provision for a ceasefire and disarmament, and creating a unified armed force – but it will have to do so using a national military that’s incredibly weak.</p>
<h2>Undercut</h2>
<p>After Colonel Qaddafi seized power in Libya in 1969, he immediately began <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/analysis-wily-gaddafi-has-made-sure-army-isn-t-strong-enough-to-topple-him-1-1502591">weakening the military</a>. The armed forces were never allowed to train with live ammunition or conduct organised military exercises, and they never developed proper leadership or coordination skills.</p>
<p>Frequent rotation of officers prevented the establishment of cohesive ties between leadership and personnel. The military was incapable of coordinating the efforts of artillery and infantry, and under-performed whenever it needed to fight.</p>
<p>Plans by the <a href="https://www.temehu.com/ntc.htm">National Transition Council</a> to integrate former fighters into the military and police have progressed very slowly, meaning the military is mainly filled with a collection of units that defected from Qaddafi’s forces in the east, known as the <a href="http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/news/libyan-rebels-rename-themselves-national-liberation-army_227">National Liberation Army</a> (NLA). As things stand the army is largely seen as an eastern brigade, not a credible national force. </p>
<p>Some smaller militias have been integrated into the military, but have yet to receive proper training. Militias still hold sway over important assets, such as the airport in Tripoli, which is <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/libya-militia-map-visual-breakdown-who-controls-what-1630392">controlled by the Zintan militia</a>, and the national military has proved unable to intervene between armed groups.</p>
<p>Rebuilding a security sector that was already weak before it fell apart will be a monumental challenge, and it’s all the more difficult given that the current internationally recognised government has so little authority or legitimacy. </p>
<p>All government orders to disband and disarm have been ignored. The militias’ behaviour gives Libya an air of complete lawlessness; the country is awash with violent groups and overstocked with small arms – and <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-atrocities-violence-flares-from-iraq-to-north-africa-37127">attacks linked to Islamic State</a> have raised the prospect of a whole new wave of violence.</p>
<p>As the proposal was launched, the US ambassador to Libya, <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/06/08/uk-libya-security-idUKKBN0OO2G720150608">Deborah Jones</a>, opined that the discussions over it will give everyone a “clear idea on who is for peace and who is not”. That is a drastic oversimplification of Libya’s problems.</p>
<p>The UN plan assumes that there are only two sides fighting against each other, but the multitude of different militias that have taken over will have to agree to the plan if it’s to work – and how that’s expected to happen is still unclear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Ezrow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With Libya carved up by warring factions, the UN has offered up a directionless and toothless peace plan.Natasha Ezrow, Senior Lecturer, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341052014-11-12T06:25:42Z2014-11-12T06:25:42ZLibyan bands of brothers show how deeply humans bond in adversity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64299/original/gj4jfhvb-1415724887.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I&#39;ve got all my brothers with me.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/magharebia/6263967082">Magharebia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s often said that blood is thicker than water – that family ties trump all others. But research with groups of men fighting in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13755445">Libya</a> has suggested that the bonds they formed in times of great adversity were as strong as those they had with their own kin. </p>
<p>During the 2011 conflict in Libya, we surveyed the civilians who had taken up arms to topple the Gaddafi-led regime and found extremely strong relationships: these men had bonded to one another as strongly as if they were brothers. </p>
<p>Those on the front line had the strongest bonds of all. Their ties were so profound that, in many cases, they were willing to die for one another. Such behaviour, where individuals show a willingness to offer the ultimate self-sacrifice and lay down their lives for people with whom they share no genes, has puzzled evolutionary scientists since the days of Darwin. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/05/1416284111.full.pdf+html">Our study</a>, published in the early online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of several pieces of research we have been conducting for the project: “Ritual, Community, and Conflict”. Anthropologists, psychologists, historians, archaeologists and evolutionary theorists are working together in this project to try to understand the forces that bind and drive human groups.</p>
<h2>In it together</h2>
<p>In July 2011, four months into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/libya">Libyan revolution</a>, a member of our team in Oxford, Brian McQuinn, joined a humanitarian relief convoy travelling to <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/libya-brink-1455411139">Misrata</a>, in the north-west of Libya.</p>
<p>While in Libya, he studied how the rebels began as groups of three to five fighters that later developed into the larger revolutionary groups. The members of each group prayed, slept and fought side by side.</p>
<p>I joined Brian in Libya as the conflict was ending. Together, we persuaded the revolutionary leadership in Misrata to allow us to survey 179 civilians from four different battalions registered with the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/category/organisation/misrata-military-council">Misrata Military Council</a>.</p>
<p>Our survey included both revolutionaries who served on the front line with weapons and non-fighters, such as workers who serviced vehicles or drove ambulances. </p>
<p>When we asked the revolutionaries to choose which group they were most bonded with, family or battalion, front-line fighters were more likely than non-fighters to choose battalion. Our findings suggest that the strongest bonds evolve through sharing the experience of war, such as the deprivation and negative stress of combat. Although most fighters were not related, they characteristically expressed feelings of brotherhood for one another.</p>
<p>We measured levels of <a href="http://www.europhd.eu/html/_onda02/07/PDF/20th_lab_materials/jane/swan_et_al_2009.pdf">identity fusion</a> – a visceral sense of oneness with the group that has been used in many previous <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22642548">studies</a>. </p>
<p>Each individual was asked to represent their relationship to the group by choosing from a series of pictures that represented different degrees of overlap between themselves and three groups: their families, their battalions and other battalions. Those who chose the picture in which the “self” overlapped completely with the group were said to be “fused” with the group in question. </p>
<p>We found that 99% of front-line fighters had strong bonds or were “fused” with their own families – but perhaps more strikingly, 97% also indicated fusion with their own battalions, and 96% with fighters in other battalions.</p>
<p>When they were asked which of the groups they were most connected with, nearly half (45%) of front-line fighters chose their own battalion rather than their family. By contrast, only 28% of non-fighters chose battalion over family. Interestingly, hardly anyone surveyed (only 1%) were fused with ordinary Libyans who supported the revolution but did not join the battalions.</p>
<h2>Strength in numbers</h2>
<p>One interpretation of this study is that sharing life-shaping, intense experiences, such as bearing the brunt of enemy fire, is what bonded Libya’s revolutionaries so strongly; an alternative explanation might be that those who were predisposed to bond with the battalion at the outset are most likely to end up on the front line with each other.</p>
<p>The fact that fighters experienced such low levels of fusion with ordinary Libyans was quite surprising. In our discussions with fighters, they suggested that non-combatants were incapable of understanding what the fighters had experienced during the revolution. In the minds of the revolutionary fighters, this distinction may have sowed the seeds of distrust between fighters and non-combatants after the war.</p>
<p>There are already a number of <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/41/4/387.short">studies</a> that look at how <a href="http://afs.sagepub.com/content/33/2/286.short">cohesion in the military</a> affects <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15324834basp0902_6">group performance</a>, but very little research has looked at how intense bonds like these are formed – how bonding with the group can lead individuals to place themselves in harm’s way and sacrifice their lives for other group members.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harvey Whitehouse receives funding from:
Economic and Social Research Council
John Templeton Foundation
John Fell Fund
</span></em></p>It’s often said that blood is thicker than water – that family ties trump all others. But research with groups of men fighting in Libya has suggested that the bonds they formed in times of great adversity…Harvey Whitehouse, Chair professor, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/323482014-10-02T05:35:54Z2014-10-02T05:35:54ZThe five-point plan used to justify fighting wars is being deployed in media again<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60564/original/vgdbspqy-1412199097.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">&#39;The danger is clear&#39;: Theresa May</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://images.pressassociation.com/meta/2.21060737.html">Joe Giddens/PA Wire</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A few hours before the UK’s first air strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq, the home secretary, Theresa May, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/isis-could-become-worlds-first-truly-terrorist-state-and-bomb-uk-with-nuclear-and-chemical-weapons-theresa-may-warns-9765049.html">warned the Tory party conference</a> that IS could become the "world’s first truly terrorist state".</p>
<p>May said that IS could realise the “often-prophesied” threat of attacking western enemies with chemical and nuclear weapons. Interesting because, as this conflict has approached, the government has been using the same techniques and devices of propaganda and persuasion that were brought out to justify the Iraq war of 2003, the removal of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 and the proposed attacks on the Assad regime in Syria in 2013.</p>
<p>If you look back at recent conflicts, and those in the Middle East in particular, the same arguments are made. There is essentially a five-point plan that can be used to justify foreign intervention of most kinds.</p>
<h2>Step 1. Highlight atrocities</h2>
<p>If you are to claim the moral high ground, the first thing to do is show that your adversary is despotic and deranged. For British governments and the media, that has long meant using atrocity propaganda.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991, we were falsely told that Iraqi soldiers had <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html">emptied babies out of incubators</a> in Kuwaiti hospitals and left them to die. In Kosovo in 1999, Tony Blair spoke of hearing <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/343739.stm">“first-hand of women raped, of children watching their fathers dragged away to be shot”</a>. In 2003, Blair spoke of the thousands of children dying every year in Iraq and Saddam’s torture chambers. Now, IS is highlighting its own barbarity in online videos and the case for action on this count hardly has to be made.</p>
<h2>Step 2. Communicate moral obligation</h2>
<p>Having established these terrible circumstances, it is necessary to demonstrate the moral certainty of the mission. In 2011, Muammar Gaddafi, like Saddam before him, was <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364365/Libya-protests-We-let-Gaddafi-murder-people-says-Cameron.html">murdering “his own people”</a>. The consistent line from the US, the UK and France back then was humanitarian. At a stroke we have the basic elements of war propaganda: the enemy is evil and to do nothing in the face of such evil would amount to dereliction of moral duty.</p>
<p>David Cameron and Barack Obama took a predictably similar view. In a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/28/remarks-president-address-nation-libya">nationally televised address</a>, Obama said, “to brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are … some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different”.</p>
<p>Here is a repetition of themes and ideas which have been the feature of war propaganda from time immemorial: this is the enemy, they do terrible things. We must stop them. If we do not, then we are no better than them and evil will prosper.</p>
<h2>Step 3. Deny enemy’s humanity</h2>
<p>Aldous Huxley wrote that: “the propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human”. On September 25, Cameron told the UN General Assembly that the jihadi’s of IS were “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2768704/We-deal-psychopathic-murderers-says-Cameron-RAF-prepares-bombing-raids-using-Storm-Shadow-bunker-busters-Brimstone-missiles-Paveway-IV-bombs.html">psychopathic, murderous, brutal</a>”. He said: “we are facing an evil against which the whole world must unite. And, as ever in the cause of freedom, democracy and justice, Britain will play its part." Here we get the explicit sense of civilisation versus savagery, of human versus animal. Good against evil. Simple binary oppositions, again narrative patterns we can all understand.</p>
<h2>Step 4. Say intervention is for the people</h2>
<p>On the eve of war in 2003, Tony Blair spoke to the nation outlining the need for action. For the people of Iraq, the removal of Saddam would be "a blessing”. When bombing began in Libya in 2011, NATO stated that the purpose of Operation Unified Protector was to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack from Gaddafi.</p>
<p>There was no military activity in Syria last year but the language was familiar. On the August 27, the UK government sought backing from the UN Security Council: "for all necessary measures to protect civilians". The US secretary of state, John Kerry, stated that the images of human suffering <a href="http://www.uspolicy.be/newsletters/foreign-policy-newsletter-august-30-2013">could not be ignored</a>. He said: “All peoples, in all nations who believe in the cause of our common humanity must stand up to ensure there is accountability for the use of chemical weapons.”</p>
<p>Cameron has been quite clear that military intervention was for the good of Iraq and at the country’s own asking: “We are acting [in Iraq] at the request of a sovereign state … I have said this in the house before: it is a legal base if you are averting a humanitarian catastrophe then you can act. Let me be clear.”</p>
<h2>Step 5. Raise threat to national security</h2>
<p>This brings us to May’s comments at the beginning of this article. If a government can also illustrate that this far-away, evil regime constitutes a threat to national security, the danger becomes localised. This tactic was utilised with various degrees of success in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003. In January of that year, for example, the press carried reports that the police had foiled a terrorist ring’s attempt to launch a chemical attack in Britain using the deadly poison Ricin. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2635807.stm">Blair stated</a> that the find showed: “This danger is present and real and with us now – and its potential is huge.”</p>
<p>In 2013, the danger was from rogue states and banned weapons. Arguing for intervention in Syria, the then foreign secretary, William Hague, said: “We cannot permit our own security to be undermined by the creeping normalisation of the use of weapons that the world has spent decades trying to control and eradicate.”</p>
<p>Now, according to Hague, ISIS has the UK in its sights – he told the Daily Telegraph on the September 28 that without military action, ISIS “would come to hit us very quickly –indeed there have already been plots." </p>
<p>For Cameron, ISIS constitutes a ”<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/david-cameron-urges-unity-isis-evil-uk-prepares-strike-iraq">clear and present danger</a>“ to the UK which must be defeated promptly because: "If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.”</p>
<p>The point of this article has not been to understate the threat of ISIS or to diminish the horror of its actions. But history has a way of repeating itself – as do the statesman and women who feature in it, and take their countries into wars that hindsight often suggests they shouldn’t have. </p>
<p>However much technology and times may change, the techniques of propaganda and persuasion remain largely the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A few hours before the UK’s first air strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq, the home secretary, Theresa May, warned the Tory party conference that IS could become the "world’s first truly terrorist…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/93512012-09-12T20:36:34Z2012-09-12T20:36:34ZState of origin? Libyan stability versus global jihad<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15333/original/zh74tpjy-1347341878.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Libyan guards outside the Tripoli prison holding former Gaddafi era intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Sabri Elmhedwi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In October Libya will officially celebrate its first anniversary of independence, though in fact it has been more than a year since Tripoli was overrun. </p>
<p>In the same month the West will mark 11 years of involvement in Afghanistan, the first step in the global War on Terror. And unfortunately for Libya, its chances of marking future birthdays may very much be dependent on the prosecution of the latter.</p>
<p>In Libya the challenge is to build on the shaky constitutional foundation while keeping a lid on the possibility of an Islamic insurgency. This is going to become increasingly difficult given the fact that radical Islamist groups are gathering strength across the region in a broad campaign of resistance that includes parts of Mali, Algeria, Niger and Chad. Being sucked into the vortex of such Salafist conflicts will be all too easy for a state that is still struggling to find an anchor point.</p>
<p>If you join the dots, fragile transitional democracies such as Libya and Tunisia are squarely in the zone of a violent ideology that spreads across two continents. There is a dogmatic affinity and element of co-operation between North African groups and the original al-Qaeda organisation and its Middle Eastern and Asian franchises, as well as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash-Shabaab_(Somalia)">al-Shabaab</a> in Somalia and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram">Boko Haram</a> in northern Nigeria.</p>
<p>The key players for Libya are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_in_the_Islamic_Maghreb">Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb</a> (AQIM), which is mainly focused on deposing the Algerian regime, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_Dine">Ansar Dine</a>, which is now in control of half of Mali. The two groups have links with other regional Islamist and/or separatist movements, and in the case of AQIM, some of its members fought in the Libyan rebellion.</p>
<p>Like the proverbial tree roots finding a crack and splitting the rock, these ideologues find adherents in regional, ethnic, economic and sectarian discontent. By offering some sort of easy solution, they gather strength and erode the legitimacy of the government. In Libya, that means exploiting provincial rivalries between Benghazi and Tripoli, as well as mounting a campaign against Sufi Muslims.</p>
<p>In August, hardline Sunnis used heavy machinery to demolish a Sufi shrine right in the middle of Tripoli in broad daylight, without any apparent interference from authorities. This sort of action corresponds with Ansar Dine’s exploits in Mali, where Sufi sites in Timbuktu and elsewhere have been levelled. (In the worldview of al-Qaeda type groups, the Sufi practice of venerating saints, scholars and their tombs is idolatrous and heretical.) By exploiting such existing divisions, the radical Islamists destabilise the community and widen the “security gap”, causing a loss of legitimacy for the government and, potentially, an increasing spiral of violence, brigandry and population displacement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15335/original/ymrn9cq2-1347342859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15335/original/ymrn9cq2-1347342859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=424&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15335/original/ymrn9cq2-1347342859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=424&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15335/original/ymrn9cq2-1347342859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=424&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15335/original/ymrn9cq2-1347342859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=533&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15335/original/ymrn9cq2-1347342859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=533&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15335/original/ymrn9cq2-1347342859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=533&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Sufi shrine in Libya being destroyed by Sunni fighters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Str</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Overcoming a creeping Islamist influence is not only a challenge for any future Libyan government, but also for those other players who would like to see a stable and democratic state emerge from the wreckage of Gaddafi’s <em>[Jamahiriya](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya_under_Muammar_Gaddafi#Great_Socialist_People.27s_Libyan_Arab_Jamahiriya</em>.281977.E2.80.932011.29)_. That includes Western powers who want to showcase a working example of an Arab democracy and establish steady access to the country’s natural resources.</p>
<p>But do we have the mind-set to deal with a challenge that is not really made <em>in</em> Libya?</p>
<p>Part of our inability to grapple with such predicaments is the Western focus on the nation state and how it should operate - Ruritania exists within this set of borders, has the ability to enforce them and has total political, economic and security control within them. Therefore if Ruritania is our friend, no enemies should originate from it.</p>
<p>This sort of logic breaks apart when we consider North Africa, a place where vast swathes of inhospitable terrain are demarcated only by imaginary lines and inhabited by some groups with an ancient culture of itinerancy. Even when there is a strong national government, it may be concentrated in the capital and exert only weak, or even no control at all over the provinces. So how do we deal with the fact that an armed group can easily slip across a border that we have no right to cross, or even operate from the territory of a friend?</p>
<p>Given the experience of Afghanistan, we don’t seem to cope very well.</p>
<p>State-centric thinking also translates into a tendency to place territorial aspirations onto insurgent groups. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers'_Party">Kurdish PKK</a> wants this bit of territory, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam">Tamil Tigers</a> want this bit and the IRA wants reunification with the Republic of Ireland. By thinking of this in terms of capturing or holding territory, which suits our own military tradition, we ignore the fact that Islamist insurgencies can be more about ideology than terrain. </p>
<p>Having a chunk of Yemen or Algeria is fine to use as a base, but if the organisation is really all about defeating the Great Satan or enforcing a particular interpretation of Islam, real estate is a flexible commodity.</p>
<p>Such global or regional ideologies also offer the possibility of co-operation amongst like minded-groups, further blurring the territorial assumptions. That an Indonesian can wander off to Yemen to work with Al-Qaeda or a Libyan can join an Islamist faction in the Syrian uprising challenges our Western imagining of nationalism and citizenship. The importance attached to sub-national identities across the Greater Middle East and Africa is also difficult for us to grasp.</p>
<p>The balancing act of helping or hindering any new Libyan leadership is a tricky one. Exerting too much obvious authority delegitimises the government, opening it up to accusations of being a Western puppet. Too little assistance and an insurgency can gain momentum; and history shows that putting such a genie back in the bottle is seldom possible.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15339/original/25bp253t-1347343564.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15339/original/25bp253t-1347343564.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=393&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15339/original/25bp253t-1347343564.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=393&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15339/original/25bp253t-1347343564.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=393&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15339/original/25bp253t-1347343564.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=494&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15339/original/25bp253t-1347343564.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=494&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/15339/original/25bp253t-1347343564.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=494&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fighter stands guard over former dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s car. What kinds of future does Libya face a year on?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Mohamed Messara</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the West, accepting that Islam will have a place at all in the politics of Libya and its neighbours will be a tough pill to swallow, but supporting the moderates is the best hope for short and medium-term stability. Collaboration between the transitional states is also important, because regional co-operation is the only way to deal with regional threats.</p>
<p>Finally we have to get better at appreciating the inter-connectedness of these threats. That so many of us are not able to point to Mali on a map or are surprised to find that Timbuktu is a real place is an indictment on our pretensions to fight terrorism. </p>
<p>And such ignorance really removes the right for us to wail and gnash our teeth over Islamist insurgencies appearing in countries we apparently care more about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mat Hardy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In October Libya will officially celebrate its first anniversary of independence, though in fact it has been more than a year since Tripoli was overrun. In the same month the West will mark 11 years of…Mat Hardy, Lecturer in Middle East Studies , Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41282011-11-04T03:04:23Z2011-11-04T03:04:23ZShould Colonel Gaddafi have been allowed to live?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/5117/original/Gaddafi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=461%2C25%2C2125%2C1860&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gaddafi&#39;s death raises moral questions about whether he should have been put on trial or not.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Rehan Khan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Muammar Gaddafi <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-challenges-for-libya-now-gaddafi-is-gone-3954">met his end</a> after being cornered in a Sirte drainage pipe, having fled from a NATO air-strike on his convoy. Questions about exactly how he died - whether caught in crossfire or summarily executed by his captors - have yet to be answered. </p>
<p>But one thing is clear – Gaddafi’s death has removed any opportunity to put him on trial for his role in over forty years of oppressive rule in Libya, and to identify what punishment might be justly imposed on him. </p>
<p>The Colonel’s death was received by some approving voices, including that of the Australian Prime Minister. Julia Gillard reacted by <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/barracking-for-us-berating-europe-gillard-picks-her-side-of-economic-divide/story-fn59niix-1226174602316">proclaiming</a> that “you live by the sword, you die by the sword”. </p>
<p>Others were less enthusiastic. Many believe that democratic values require us to follow a proper legal process. This belief might be defended even if the verdict seems like a foregone conclusion, as in Gaddafi’s case.</p>
<p>On a rather separate note, it is also likely that Gaddafi possessed information that might have resolved questions about the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. With his death, the likelihood of ever gaining this information has diminished dramatically. </p>
<h2>Informative claims</h2>
<p>What is notable is that those who regret Gaddafi’s death have usually offered clear reasons for why they feel this way. One thing that is striking about views such as Prime Minister Gillard’s is that less effort is made to supply such precision. </p>
<p>As with metaphors generally, it is hard to pin down what Gillard’s claim about “living by the sword” is actually communicating. It hovers between a claim about what Gaddafi morally deserved, and a suggestion that after living in a reckless and self-serving way, one must expect some sort of violent come-uppance. This second claim might be true, but need not say anything about morality.</p>
<p>Gillard could perhaps clarify her view if asked to. But relying on a phrase like “live by the sword, die by the sword” is an unwelcome attempt to summarise a complex moral situation with a media-friendly slogan. </p>
<h2>Morality and justice</h2>
<p>Justice, viewed in isolation, may have required that Gaddafi had been kept alive long enough to stand trial. This leaves it open whether a legal process would have established that death was an appropriate punishment. </p>
<p>But when we ask whether Gaddafi ought to have lived, we are probably asking more than just a moral question. And to the extent that we are asking a moral question, we are not just asking about what Gaddafi deserved, or what punishment was just.</p>
<p>We can only speculate as to what difference Gaddafi’s continued survival would have made to the development of a peaceful future in Libya. </p>
<p>But it is arguable that a <a href="http://theconversation.com/gaddafi-arrest-warrant-tests-credibility-of-international-criminal-court-2043">prolonged trial at The Hague</a> would have frustrated values other than justice. For example, stability and confidence within a new democracy can be less easy to achieve when an ex-dictator retains some sort of voice in the world. </p>
<h2>Should Gaffadi have lived?</h2>
<p>When faced with questions such as this, the best we can do is try to identify what values are at stake. We can then ask how they might be weighed against each other. </p>
<p>Of course, this is hard. But relying on metaphors will only take us further from the sort of informative answer we should want.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Halliday does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Muammar Gaddafi met his end after being cornered in a Sirte drainage pipe, having fled from a NATO air-strike on his convoy. Questions about exactly how he died - whether caught in crossfire or summarily…Daniel Halliday, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39542011-10-24T03:39:57Z2011-10-24T03:39:57ZThe challenges for Libya now Gaddafi is gone<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4749/original/Libya_woman.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People in Libya are desperate for change and the new government will have to manage expectations carefully.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AFP/Abdullah Doma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15422262">relegation of Moammar Gaddafi</a> to the meat-locker of history is a significant exorcism of Libya’s past. </p>
<p>Whether it would have been better for him to face trial is a moot point. It’s doubtful that too many Libyans will be having an existential crisis over the ethical circumstances of his death. They would never have truly felt free if Gaddafi had slipped away somewhere or wound up <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/23/take-gaddafi-alive-and-try-him-at-the-hague.html">in The Hague</a>, only to keep up his grandstanding rhetoric.</p>
<h2>Running Libya</h2>
<p>What does remain though is the question of how the new Libya will be run. Gaddafi’s <a href="http://www.mathaba.net/info/">Jamahiriya system</a> was purposely designed to prevent any effective power in governance and the legislature was a rubber stamp charade.</p>
<p>A hasty “<a href="http://www.ntclibya.org/english/libya/">Interim Constitutional Declaration</a>” was made by the National Transitional Council, undoubtedly at the behest of the West, but basically Libyans will have to come up with a completely new blueprint as to how their nation will operate.</p>
<p>The basis of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/sharia_1.shtml">Sharia law</a> for the judicial system (as it is in most secular Arab nations) will not be too hard for the West to accept. But the spectre of hard-line Islamic groups waiting to swoop on elections will be more difficult to swallow.</p>
<h2>Ensuring security</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4747/original/Jalil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4747/original/Jalil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4747/original/Jalil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4747/original/Jalil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4747/original/Jalil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4747/original/Jalil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4747/original/Jalil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Chair of the National Transitional Council, has declared Libya free, but his challenges have only just begun.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Sabri Elmhedwi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And it’s not only the legislature that offers uncertainties. The executive, especially in the context of ensuring security in the new state, is just as problematic. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cfr.org/iraq/iraq-debaathification/p7853">mistakes of Iraq</a>, where the dismissal of the armed forces, the police and anybody with a connection to the ancien régime caused a civil meltdown, must be avoided in Libya. </p>
<p>But how can the old cronies and state security apparatus be seen as credible enough to carry on their roles now?</p>
<h2>Weapons on the loose</h2>
<p>Related to this question of security is the need to demilitarise the country. A major issue with the short to mid-term prospects for stability in Libya is the weapons proliferation that has occurred during the fighting. </p>
<p>There are now countless thousands of <a href="http://theconversation.com/getting-technical-toyota-pickups-anti-aircraft-weapons-and-the-libyan-revolution-3643">pieces of military hardware</a> in private hands: hands that now have the experience to use them. </p>
<p>There are obviously no paper records of who grabbed hold of what during the revolution and a lot of that equipment will be squirreled away because Libyans now know that being heavily-armed is a way to defeat tyranny.</p>
<p>Of particular concern are the whereabouts of up to 20,000 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that the Gaddafi regime stockpiled over the years. These are unaccounted for following the months of chaos and over-running of military facilities. </p>
<p>Weapons such as these leaking out onto the black market are of grave concern to NATO. One man parked at the side of Heathrow Airport could cause mass-casualties with just a single example of such a device.</p>
<p>The access to weaponry will also be a factor in the pursuit of any sectarian conflicts.</p>
<h2>Tribal divisions </h2>
<p>Gaddafi was prone to fan the flames of <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-disorganisation-of-libyas-rag-tag-rebels-540">ethnic and tribal rivalry</a> within Libya but his absolute power also kept a lid on any escalation. </p>
<p>Now that he is gone it will be a big challenge for the NTC to seal these divisions. It is not an impossible task, but all it will take is one group of hot-heads tooled up with some heavy weapons and the foundation of a united Libya will crack.</p>
<h2>Impatient for improvement</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4748/original/Libya_child.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4748/original/Libya_child.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=428&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4748/original/Libya_child.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=428&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4748/original/Libya_child.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=428&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4748/original/Libya_child.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=538&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4748/original/Libya_child.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=538&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4748/original/Libya_child.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=538&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Libyan people want change to come now.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Sabri Elmhedwi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But beyond governance and guns lies perhaps the biggest challenge of all: patience. </p>
<p>When you’ve lived for two generations under a tyrant and then thrown him off it is entirely understandable that you expect things to get better. </p>
<p>The citizens of Tunisia and Egypt anticipate the same. The pace with which real improvement can take place though is likely to be slow. </p>
<p>A shattered economy, a narrow export base (albeit a lucrative one), an emasculated intelligentsia and no experience with democracy will make next few years painful for Libyans.</p>
<p>It certainly won’t be tomorrow that everyone is in possession of a car, an air-conditioner and a well-paying job.</p>
<p>The future is definitely there for Libyans who want to seize it, but they will need to grasp the nettle before they can hold the laurel.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/3954/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mat Hardy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The relegation of Moammar Gaddafi to the meat-locker of history is a significant exorcism of Libya’s past. Whether it would have been better for him to face trial is a moot point. It’s doubtful that too…Mat Hardy, Lecturer in Middle East Studies , Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39452011-10-20T23:55:56Z2011-10-20T23:55:56ZGaddafi is dead: What now for the region?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4686/original/Gadaffi_military.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=32%2C4%2C1990%2C1581&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colonel Gaddafi&#39;s death presents a challenge to regional unity.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Alessandro di Meo </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15389550">death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi</a> in Sirte highlights the remarkable impact a single individual can have on a whole country. Until he was captured or killed Libyans could not get on with the job of rebuilding. </p>
<p>His mere existence represented an inspiration to his followers and a continuing threat to the new order. Gaddafi’s death will, therefore, clear the way for the provisional government to get on with its job. </p>
<h2>Gaddafi’s supporters</h2>
<p>But big problems remain. Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al Islam, has <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/20/us-libya-saifal-islam-idUSTRE79J3VB20111020">reportedly escaped</a> from Sirte. </p>
<p>Saif lacks his father’s hold over Libyans but he is a formidable character who might be able to rally remnants of his father’s regime and continue the fight. </p>
<p>And, as we have seen over past weeks, Gaddafi still has many committed supporters. </p>
<p>How they respond to his death and the nature of his killing may determine whether the country can settle down to the reconstruction process or has to suffer further violence.</p>
<p>Gaddafi’s death raises the question of how to restore domestic harmony between supporters of his regime and its opponents. </p>
<p>While many people inside and outside Libya have expressed satisfaction that he is dead, others could have done with the reassurance that might have been provided by Gaddafi’s trial, either in Libya or in the International Criminal Court as mandated by the UN Security Council.</p>
<h2>Regional implications</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4684/original/Gaddafi_Arab_leaders.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4684/original/Gaddafi_Arab_leaders.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=413&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4684/original/Gaddafi_Arab_leaders.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=413&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4684/original/Gaddafi_Arab_leaders.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=413&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4684/original/Gaddafi_Arab_leaders.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=519&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4684/original/Gaddafi_Arab_leaders.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=519&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4684/original/Gaddafi_Arab_leaders.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=519&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colonel Gaddafi had moved his regime away from the Arab League, but the National Transitional Council is likely reconnect with Libya’s Arab neighbours.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nabil Mounzer </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gaddafi’s death has regional implications. </p>
<p>The Colonel’s inability to influence his fellow Arab leaders led him to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14806140">change his focus to Africa</a>, where he made significant financial contributions to various regimes, <a href="http://www.voanews.com/zimbabwe/news/Zimbabwe-Ruling-Partners-React-Differently-to-Gadhafi-Death-132261393.html">including Zimbabwe</a>. </p>
<p>While the Arab world largely turned against Gaddafi, sub-Saharan Africa continued to support him to the end. </p>
<p>As part of his pact with Africa, his forces were supplemented by African mercenaries and the hatred that they built up has been expressed in some of the less savoury excesses of the revolutionary forces. </p>
<p>The new Libya is, therefore, likely to reorient itself to the Arab world and Libyans will be watching events there closely, just as their neighbours will be watching them.</p>
<p>Three dictators have gone, two are under great domestic pressure and the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are displaying great nervousness about the movement for change.</p>
<h2>The ones to watch</h2>
<p>Among Libya’s neighbours, Algeria will bear watching closely. </p>
<p>The military-dominated regime there was hostile to the Libyan revolts and provided safe haven to members of Gaddafi’s family, much to the irritation of the transitional government. </p>
<p>Algeria responded to the wave of unrest across the region with cosmetic changes, but the country remains frozen by the memory of the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/790556.stm">horrific civil war</a> that plagued it in the 1990s. The regime has reluctantly come to terms with Gaddafi’s fall but will be eager to prevent the contagion of change from spilling over their mutual border.</p>
<h2>Electoral tests</h2>
<p>Libyans will be watching Tunisia with greater hope. Tunisians vote in a general election on Sunday. It’s only a small country and its influence across the region is limited. Nevertheless, an electoral outcome that promotes the democratic drive will strengthen democratic forces in Libya.</p>
<p>The big one will be Egypt. Parliamentary elections <a href="http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org/">are scheduled there</a> for 21 November and their outcome will have repercussions across the Middle East. </p>
<p>Successful elections, which reflect the will of the people, will provide huge inspiration to people in other countries struggling to throw off the dead hand of dictatorial rule. </p>
<p>Elections that are manipulated to promote the interests of the provisional military council will set back - but not necessarily reverse - gains made elsewhere.</p>
<p>The revolutions that have swept the region have displayed considerable common features, but this should not obscure the marked differences between the countries of the region. </p>
<p>While Egypt’s military is in a position to direct the course of the protest movement there, the same does not apply in Tunisia and Libya where the armed forces are not so powerful. </p>
<h2>Moderating rivalries</h2>
<p>Libya’s armed forces were kept weak by Gaddafi to prevent military leaders from organising a coup against him. The Libyan revolts featured military figures but much of the fighting was done by civilians who can be expected to go back to their jobs as soon as possible.</p>
<p>The challenge facing the <a href="http://www.ntclibya.org/english/">transitional government</a> will be to establish the conditions under which tribal rivalries can be moderated, reconciliation can be pushed forward and economic revival can be pursued. Gaddafi’s removal is only a small step along that path.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/3945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Billingsley is affiliated with the University of New South Wales.</span></em></p>The death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte highlights the remarkable impact a single individual can have on a whole country. Until he was captured or killed Libyans could not get on with the job of…Anthony Billingsley, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, UNSWLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39422011-10-20T21:49:06Z2011-10-20T21:49:06ZFrom dictatorship to democracy: The significance of Colonel Gaddafi's death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4683/original/CU_Gaddafi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After 42 years in charge of the country, and surviving a violent uprising, Colonel Gaddafi was killed in his hometown of Sirte.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Khaled el-Fiqi </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The former Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been killed. He was caught in a firefight between his supporters, and rebels backing the <a href="http://www.ntclibya.org/english/">National Transitional Council</a>, following a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15389550">Nato airstrike</a> in his hometown of Sirte. </p>
<p>The Conversation spoke to Deakin University’s Mat Hardy about the significance of Gaddafi’s death.</p>
<h2>What does Gaddafi’s death mean for the people of Libya?</h2>
<p>I think it’s very symbolic in that most Libyans wouldn’t have felt have truly free unless this had happened. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4682/original/Libya_celebrate.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4682/original/Libya_celebrate.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=392&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4682/original/Libya_celebrate.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=392&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4682/original/Libya_celebrate.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=392&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4682/original/Libya_celebrate.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=493&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4682/original/Libya_celebrate.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=493&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4682/original/Libya_celebrate.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=493&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gaddafi’s death has given Libyans a sense of freedom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Mohamed Messara</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Is it better for the country that he was killed rather than captured and <a href="http://theconversation.com/drafts/2043/format">put on trial</a>?</h2>
<p>From a humanitarian point of view you don’t want people killed out of hand, but it’s important that it ended in this way.</p>
<p>In the trials of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4507568.stm">Saddam Hussein</a> and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/europe/2001/yugoslavia_after_milosevic/default.stm">Slobodan Milosovec</a> in a sense they had the opportunity to get the last word - they got to deny everything. With Libya we’ve consigned Gaddafi to the dustbin of history. I doubt he’ll become any sort of martyr. I don’t think there will be many out there in Libya who want to preserve his memory in that way.</p>
<h2>What does the NTC need to do now to ensure security in the country?</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4680/original/JIbril.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/4680/original/JIbril.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=383&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4680/original/JIbril.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=383&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4680/original/JIbril.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=383&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4680/original/JIbril.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=482&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4680/original/JIbril.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=482&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/4680/original/JIbril.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=482&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The leader of the National Transitional Council, Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, will have to contain tribal rivalries to ensure the security of the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Sabri Elmhedwi </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some internal divisions will be on show. The tribal difficulties will be exacerbated by the fact that there are many weapons in the country, and no-one is going to hand them in anytime soon. Small disputes could escalate quickly to a very serious level. </p>
<h2>What does the international community need to do?</h2>
<p>It will be a matter of finance. They need to make sure that financial help given to the country is well spent. The Libyans want to do it by themselves, but advice will need to be given to make the transition from dictatorship to democracy.</p>
<h2>What is the significance of NATO’s involvement in his death?</h2>
<p>I don’t know that there’s any great significance in it. It would have been difficult to know that would have been the outcome of a single airstrike. </p>
<h2>Will Gaddafi’s death embolden rebels in the Arab Spring, spreading further uprisings throughout the region?</h2>
<p>I’m sure if you’re a Syrian the news of Gaddafi’s demise will be uncomfortable. If I were <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/18/syria-assad-must-resign-obama">al-Assad</a> I would be concerned right now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/3942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mat Hardy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The former Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been killed. He was caught in a firefight between his supporters, and rebels backing the National Transitional Council, following a Nato airstrike…Mat Hardy, Lecturer in Middle East Studies , Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36432011-09-30T21:24:32Z2011-09-30T21:24:32ZGetting technical: Toyota pickups, anti-aircraft weapons and the Libyan Revolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/3976/original/PIC_-_Libya_techs_2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Libyan opposition fighter fires from the back of a technical</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Somewhere in the bowels of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota,_Aichi">Toyota City</a> there must be a cadre of marketing salarymen working out how the corporation can apply for official sponsorship of the Libyan Revolution. </p>
<p>After all, the whole ground campaign seems to have been made possible by their Hilux and Landcruiser utes, so why not get some mileage out of it? </p>
<p>Alternatively, might we see a fashionable new range of the vehicles pitched here? Complete with home-sprayed camouflage and quad-barrelled anti-aircraft guns?</p>
<h2>DIY armoured corps</h2>
<p>Yes, when it comes to mobile African warfare, nothing beats the jury-rigged vehicle known as the “technical”. </p>
<p>Tanks are usually owned by the government and use too much juice anyway. Ditto aircraft and heavy artillery. </p>
<p>So instead, every rebel commander knows that all you’ve got to do is grab a civilian commercial vehicle, strap on some military hardware, pile the back up with volunteers in assorted states of uniform and speed off to the front line.</p>
<h2>Etymology of the gun truck</h2>
<p>The technical gets its name from a euphemism back in the days of the Somalia relief rort.</p>
<p>Media crews, NGOs and other civilian types had to pay for the security services provided by local warlords. Little more than a bare-faced protection racket, the fees for these mercenary services were often noted down as “technical assistance”. </p>
<p>The goons were sometimes paid just to pose menacingly on their 4WDs behind the network news stars doing a live cross.</p>
<p>The popularity of these improvised military vehicles in African warfare is due to their more peaceful prevalence within the freelance transport economy. </p>
<p>Every marketplace, bus station and industrial zone in the continent is packed with the same plain vanilla Japanese models. Their owners strive to eke every last dinar out of them by hauling passengers, freight, livestock, agricultural produce … just about anything that needs to be moved from A to B.</p>
<p>Everything that can possibly be packed into the bed and the cab will be, until the point where the axles are just about scraping the road. The driver’s offsider, with his trademark fistful of grubby notes, will negotiate the price and perhaps decide who gets the privilege of riding up front. For an extra fee, of course.</p>
<p>Sometimes whole extended families will pool years of savings to buy their pick-up because of the steady stream of income it can provide.</p>
<p>Small wonder then that when it comes to irregular warfare, the irregular freight fleet is at the front line.</p>
<h2>History re-invents itself</h2>
<figure>
<iframe width="100%" height="253" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6NsDI2ep8ME" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption>Fighters using a technical at Galaa on June 7 2011 Credit: Humphrey Cheung, www.warjumper.com</figcaption></figure>
<p>It’s fitting in a way that the Libyan desert is now host to so many technicals because it’s where the idea began. In the improvisational days of 1941, the British Army in North Africa was willing to give just about anything a go.</p>
<p>Talented amateurs with a knack for infiltrating their own chains of command were able to get all sort of experiments approved. Mixing old school connections, a vast and fluid campaign theatre and a large dose of balls-out bravado, groups such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Air_Service">SAS</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Desert_Group">Long Range Desert Group</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popski's_Private_Army">Popski’s Private Army</a> made liberal use of unarmoured trucks and jeeps with all manner of weaponry bolted on.</p>
<p>Pushing deep into the Sahara, they were able to outflank the more hidebound Axis forces on scouting missions, raids and liaison missions deep into Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. It is said that the SAS ground attacks on airfields destroyed more enemy aircraft in North Africa than did the RAF.</p>
<h2>Sturdy, reliable and cheap</h2>
<p>Post-war, it’s probably no coincidence that the Soviets managed to produce heavy weaponry that fits perfectly in the bed of a pick-up or is easily towed behind. </p>
<p>A practical people used to peasant technical mash-ups, the anti-aircraft cannons and recoiless rifles they sent around the world by the millions were easily adapted to African circumstances.</p>
<p>Of course firing a multi-barrelled cannon from the bed of a light vehicle with a civilian suspension is not a recipe for great accuracy.</p>
<p>But then a lot of the firing in the Libyan campaign is more about keeping the enemy’s head down and your own morale up whilst you wait for the Eurofighters to drop their loads.</p>
<p>And you need to be comfortable whilst doing it. In my favourite snippet of technical footage from Libya, I noted a plump, balding gent sitting in the gunner’s seat of some piece of nasty-looking Soviet hardware. </p>
<p>As he leaned forward to look through the sights I noted that he had carefully draped his backrest with the therapeutic goodness of a wooden beaded seat cover. </p>
<p>If it’s good enough for a cabbie, it’s good enough for a revolution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/3643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mat Hardy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Somewhere in the bowels of Toyota City there must be a cadre of marketing salarymen working out how the corporation can apply for official sponsorship of the Libyan Revolution. After all, the whole ground…Mat Hardy, Lecturer in Middle East Studies , Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/29692011-08-22T01:58:17Z2011-08-22T01:58:17ZLibya: the death throes of the Gaddafi regime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/3038/original/PIC_-_Libya_revolution.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jubiliant Libyans celebrate the arrival of rebel forces in central Tripoli</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The situation in Libya remains fluid but with armed rebel fighters now in Green Square in central Tripoli, it appears the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is in its final hours.</p>
<p>Two of the dictator’s sons - Muhammad and Saif Al-Islam - have been arrested by rebel forces. There is an International Criminal Court indictment against Saif for ordering war crimes.</p>
<p>The latest reports suggest that rebels from the western city of Misrata launched an amphibious commando operation under cover provided by NATO warships to reinforce those rising against the regime in the capital.</p>
<p>The Conversation spoke with Deakin University Middle East and North Africa expert Mat Hardy about what Libya after Gaddafi might look like.</p>
<h2>After the fall of Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi, do we now have free and democratic North Africa?</h2>
<p>We are seeing a change, I don’t know if we’re seeing total change. Algeria is slackening its grip a little bit but it is still not by any great standards a free and democratic country.</p>
<p>Morocco, although it is a little bit more liberal, still has power very firmly concentrated in the hands of a non-elected head of state.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen what will happen in Egypt. We are seeing a change in the process, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a total change yet.</p>
<h2>Are there those in the West who might be concerned that any war crimes trial for Gaddafi or his sons and allies might give the deposed dictator the opportunity to air “dirty laundry” about <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8449111/Libya-Tony-Blair-defends-deal-in-the-desert-with-Colonel-Gaddafi.html">deals done</a> with countries like the USA and UK?</h2>
<p>I think there would definitely be a lot of people in Europe and the West who would be hoping Colonel Gaddafi doesn’t come out of this alive just because it would be a simpler and cleaner solution for everybody.</p>
<p>Whether a trial was pursued or not, I think Gaddafi would say all sorts of things. Most of the things Gaddafi says are not all that credible and are always tinged with the status of lunacy that the West ascribes to him.</p>
<p>As far as spilling the beans on any deals done over oil or anything like that, I don’t the West has got a huge amount to fear because nobody ever believes much that Gaddafi says.</p>
<p>I think the real fly in the ointment as far as a trial goes is the very, very slow pace at which those things tend to move in the <a href="http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC">International Criminal Court</a> (ICC). We see that it can often take years in the ICC with a fairly inconclusive result at the end of it.</p>
<p>I’m not holding my breath that Gaddafi is going to be sentenced to life for war crimes at this stage.</p>
<h2>What are the chances that the rebel forces will now turn on each other, similar to the infighting between Afghan Mujahideen after the fall of Kabul in 1992?</h2>
<p>I think there is a very high chance that Libya will descend into chaos of some sort. Although we in the West would like to see this portrayed as a very noble thing with Libyans coming together and ousting the dictator I think the chances of it breaking down into tribalism and factionalism are very, very high.</p>
<p>I think it is just human nature that people will want to get revenge on other groups. What is important is that Libya is a very tribal society, much more tribal than say Egypt. Libya doesn’t have that wide band of middle class citizens that Egypt has.</p>
<p>It does really break down into an elite that had control and then everybody else, and everybody else is in tribes.</p>
<p>I think that the chance of those groups turning on each other as everyone makes a grab for power are quite high. There is also a division between the east and the west of the country which never really had much to do with each other. There is the possibility that rivalries there will play out.</p>
<h2>There are <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8339225/Libya-up-to-a-million-refugees-could-pour-into-Europe.html">grave concerns in Europe</a> that the collapse of the Gaddafi regime could see an exodus of refugees across the Mediterranean Sea. Do you think this likely</h2>
<p>I would say it is almost a certainty that the refugee movements to Europe will continue and increase. I think Libya will be extremely unsettled for a long while and if those kind of tribal rivalries and revenges do play out then people have got no choice but to move on.</p>
<p>The amount of refugees moving into Europe from North Africa completely diminishes the numbers that we deal with here in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/2969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mat Hardy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The situation in Libya remains fluid but with armed rebel fighters now in Green Square in central Tripoli, it appears the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is in its final hours. Two of the dictator’s…Mat Hardy, Lecturer in Middle East Studies , Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26992011-08-05T04:44:51Z2011-08-05T04:44:51ZThe Libya stalemate: can it be broken?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/2674/original/PIC_-_Hardy_Libya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Explosions over Libya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After five months of conflict in Libya, the Gaddafi regime remains in power in Tripoli despite the rebel campaign and NATO airstrikes.</p>
<p>Recent days have seen serious developments in the country. Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif-Al-Islam has suggested the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/04/gaddafi-son-allegiance-saif-islam">regime may ally with Islamist forces</a> and turn the country into a fundamentalist Muslim state.</p>
<p>At the same, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/31/libyan-rebels-benghazi-misrata-nafusa">fractures have developed</a> between the rebel forces.</p>
<p>The Conversation spoke with Deakin University Middle East expert Mat Hardy to find out whether the Gaddafi regime is serious when it says it will join forces with fundamentalists and if the current military deadlock can be broken.</p>
<h2>Is Saif Al Islam serious when he says Libya will become an Islamist state? Why would he make those comments now?</h2>
<p>I think that Saif saying that is purely a shock tactic. He basically says to everybody “If you want to go against the Gaddafi regime, you’re going to end up with Islamists”.</p>
<p>I don’t put too much stock in what he’s saying. He’s really just trying to say to everybody, it is either us or an Islamic fundamentalist state.</p>
<h2>Is al-Islam trying to wedge some of the Gulf States who are supporting the rebels by implying they are undermining a true Muslim regime?</h2>
<p>Saif is trying to wedge just about everybody in this. He is trying to wedge the rebel forces by saying they are not legitimate secular forces.</p>
<p>He referred to the Islamists as the “real power on the ground”. He is trying to push everybody apart with this and he is trying point out to the Western forces that they are potentially backing a fundamentalist Islamic force than any move for democracy.</p>
<h2>Is it realistic threat or is it a cynical ploy?</h2>
<p>I think the chances of the Gaddafis becoming Islamists is about as much as Tony Abbott joining the Greens. Muammar Gaddafi has a very long history of actively campaigning against extreme forms of Islam. He has referred to people and groups like al-Qaeda as being more dangerous than the Israelis or the Americans.</p>
<p>He has said the fundamentalists should be taken out into the street and shot like dogs. I can’t see him coming to a form of accommodation with the sort of Islamic extremists we think of in terms of al-Qaeda and so forth.</p>
<h2>Has the conflict in Libya now reached a stalemate? Were those voices who warned against the West becoming involved right?</h2>
<p>We have reached the stalemate that we always seem to reach when there is a great reliance on Western airpower supporting local forces. We saw it quite often in the Balkans and other places.</p>
<p>There’s a limit to how much air strikes can do especially when the government or loyalist forces have most of the firepower on the ground. There’s a situation with the geography and the military tactics being used by both sides.</p>
<p>To break the stalemate you’d need to have some quite heavy conventional forces move into the country.</p>
<h2>What about the emerging divisions between the rebel forces?</h2>
<p>There is definitely a situation where there is no unity between the rebel groups and that is because of the nature of Libyan politics. </p>
<p>There are people in the rebel forces who were former Ministers or cronies of Gaddafi who have now jumped ship and it is quite natural that other elements of the rebels wouldn’t really trust their motives.</p>
<p>The British government has unfrozen 125 million sterling in Gaddafi regime assets and handed them over to the rebels. It is human nature that people might start falling out over the spoils.</p>
<p>But there is definitely no unity among the rebels, there never has been and I am in no way surprised that things are starting to fall apart a bit.</p>
<h2>What are the chances that a new strongman may emerge from the chaos? Would the West welcome that?</h2>
<p>The West’s worst nightmare is that strongman or a strong force might emerge and it might be an Islamist one. So perhaps the West would welcome an autocratic leader who wasn’t an Islamist. That might settle things down and get the oil flowing again.</p>
<h2>Wasn’t Gaddafi that man?</h2>
<p>Gaddafi wasn’t that good for business. His nationalisation of the oil industry and so forth wasn’t that good for Western business. He was also a loose cannon. Historically the West doesn’t mind strongmen as long as they do what they are told.</p>
<p>It is when they go rogue that the West doesn’t like them anymore. It is was happened with Gaddafi and what happened with Manuel Noriega and so on and so on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/2699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mat Hardy has no interests or conflicts that require disclosure.</span></em></p>After five months of conflict in Libya, the Gaddafi regime remains in power in Tripoli despite the rebel campaign and NATO airstrikes. Recent days have seen serious developments in the country. Muammar…Mat Hardy, Lecturer in Middle East Studies , Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.